Radeon HD 6000 is a minor improvement

ATI’s next generation Southern Islands cores are not promising anything spectacular. It looks like these cores are going to be just a tweak of ATI's existing Radeon HD 5000 series architecture.

This is mainly due the fact that this generation remains developed for 40nm and ATI still doesn’t have any new amazing architecture until 28nm and we have already reported that 28nm cores are coming sometime in 2011.

The release of the first cores based on the new improved generation is planned for October time, but ATI might introduce them in last days of September just to pull wool over investors’ eyes, as if it launches in late September it can still claim that launch took place in Q3 2010. They have already played this trump card with the Radeon HD 5000 series.

With this in mind, Nvidia at least has a fighting chance for back to school and Q4 2010 sales period. At least the graphics market will finally become interesting.